Our pre-print on a #SARSCoV2 #Alpha variant outbreak in a primary #school in Geneva - epidemiological and virological investigation - what have we found & what have we done? #COVID19 #children #Switzerland medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
Main findings: 1) child-to-child & child-to-adult transmission 2) SARS-CoV-2 can spread rapidly between children & adults in schools 3) introduction into households 4) #SARSCoV2 sequencing showed cases belong to the same cluster 5) RDTs missed cases 5) undetected seroconversions
What did we do? We used child-friendly sampling as these were children 4-6 years: oropharyngeal swab for direct virus detection & sequencing, and capillary blood for serology thanks to a previously newly developed immunoassay with @MaerklLab @EPFL
Study is part part of a longitudinal, prospective, primary school-based surveillance study (SEROCoV-Schools) - we fought a long time to set this up, as initially in the beginning of the pandemic not considered of interest by funders & stakeholders - but it's quite timely now
Details: The outbreak involved 20 children (4 to 6 years) from 4 classes, 2 teachers & 3 household members. Infection attack rates were 11.8 - 62.0% among pupils, 22.2% among teachers & 0% among non-teaching staff. Secondary attack rate among household members: 10.7%.
The study was a great team effort @silviast9 @ElsaLorthe @GregMichielin @MBekliz @andrewazman @AGLhuillier_ID @posfay @iguessous @SebastianMaerkl @MaerklLab and many others not on Twitter
Our conclusions: Effective measures to limit transmission in schools have the potential to reduce the overall community circulation. (These data are on the Alpha variant - similar investigations for the more transmissible Delta outbreak are ongoing.)
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